Afraid to Live But Not Afraid to Die: The Autobiography of Young Black Men

I often wonder what has changed to make folks, especially African American men, less concerned, apathetic and even irresponsible about their lives. The behaviors we display are not productive, and the things we do — from fighting, to not knowing how to use a belt, to making it rain in strip clubs, to gang culture makes me ask: Are black men afraid to live more than they are afraid to die? Biggie, now deceased, said it best with his Ready to Die album.

I ask this in all sincerity in an age where it appears that a large corpus of young black males would rather take the easy way out, denigrate the importance of education and think of all outcomes in terms of money, yet not show any penchant to work for what they want. I do not know if it a sign of the times, or the veneration of a culture that reveals drug dealing and making music about sordid topics more than the sustainable values of family and self-determination.

From ghetto street fights on Youtube to videos that display women as being nothing more than meat, many of us promote this under the guise of "keeping it real." We have more knowledge about the mundane than that which may assist our personal growth and development. We can make time to know about Lil Wayne but nothing else of substance.

Why? I cannot answer that question. Maybe it is easy to look at that which affects us the most or least in the form of media and parental influences. From clubbing to our concern for designer clothes and Air Force Ones, young males value a host of "things" more than intellectual development in an environment of an excessively sexually degenerate culture. Ours is a problematic state of being, for we lack knowledge of self, which is what causes us to participate in our own self-destruction. Maybe that is why we sing and have the bling-bling but no books.

Yes, I may be wrong in my terse examination of the state of young African American males, but I will state what I think is an objective reality. Gone it appears are the days of children wanting to be professionals and valuing education. This is the autobiography of young black men today, many are afraid to live but even more are not afraid of dying.